


Fuurin

by DaughterOfTheWest



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Coffee, Fluff, M/M, Minific, Oneshot, Spoilers through the end of Madarame's palace, Summer, This fic dedicated to the one week of summer break in P5 where Yusuke visited me like every day, centipedes are scary ok, cute boys hanging out and being cute, just take this ok I wrote it at like 3-4AM last night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 16:18:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10666326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterOfTheWest/pseuds/DaughterOfTheWest
Summary: Yusuke does nothing in halves. Akira is transfixed. They are both cute dorks.





	Fuurin

Yusuke does nothing in halves.

 

Maybe that’s the first thing Akira notices about him; he chased Ann out of a car into the subway system and through to another platform in order to ask her to model, throwing any concerns about propriety to the wind for the sake of his art. When they came to him with suspicion he fought them on Madarame’s true nature every step of the way, until all the evidence was brought to light. And when Madarame’s shadow confessed the full weight of his sins? Yusuke didn’t do retribution in halves, either.

 

There’s an honor to it, Akira supposes, leaning over the counter at Leblanc to hand him a cup of coffee. His eyes sweep down to the mug and consider the steam with the same care he afforded to the sculptures in the museum they went to last week. Even when he takes a sip and nearly spits out the drink (citing his ‘uncultured taste’, vowing to learn the bitter intricacies of its bouquet) he demands himself to swallow and follow through.

 

Ever since the first day of Summer break--Yusuke appearing on Akira’s doorstep, dripping water but bearing a pile of books kept reverently dry-- they fell into a companionable sync: Yusuke would arrive with whatever object of fascination he had discovered most recently (sometimes books, sometimes movies, sometimes new art supplies or sometimes even just an interesting plant he picked up on the street), Akira would make them coffee, and they would go up to his room to enjoy whatever it was Yusuke was so enthused about. He talked with just as much fervor about a particularly beautiful leaf as he did with anything else.

 

Nothing in halves.

 

Today it’s a charcoal set he borrowed from Kousei’s art studio. His fingers are already dusted with soot, sides of his hands where they rest on the page making dusty black half-moons that leave smudges on his cheeks whenever he goes to tuck a strand of hair behind one ear. He’s so absorbed in muttering and drawing the  _ fuurin _ hanging from Akira’s window that he doesn’t notice that Akira’s been staring at his profile for the better part of ten minutes. 

 

“...an element of wonderful transience in the sound, not unlike the bells of buddhist temples and their ephemerality, the true heart of beauty...”

 

His lips keep moving and eyes keep darting up and down-- bell to page, page to bell-- hands keep floating over the likeness he’s creating as the bell chimes on and on. The scene itself doesn’t seem real. The boy sitting cross-legged on the end of his bed is too elegant, the  _ fuurin _ ’s song too perfectly emblematic of Summer, the impulse he has to reach out to Yusuke too destructive. If he reaches out, this peace will shatter. 

 

And yet there’s a centipede crawling up Yusuke’s ankle, so an argument can be made that NOT reaching out will allow the whole setup to be destroyed in a far less beautiful way.

 

Akira tries to be subtle about it. Yusuke is so deep in his creative zone that he might not even realize, or care-- and wouldn’t that be nice, he can practically imagine a version of this scenario ending in Yusuke’s detached “huh”-- until Akira pinches the centipede off of Yusuke’s ankle, and finds its pincers now snapped shut on the soft squishy webbing of his thumb. 

 

The cry he lets out is not elegant. It is not beautiful, it is not graceful, and it sounds more like the ugly squawk of a pigeon getting beaned by a baseball than the pretty chime of summer bells. Yusuke, for all of his concentration, snaps his head over just in time to see the centipede’s sting and sends his sketchbook and charcoals flying in surprise. A few sticks smack Akira in the face as they clatter and crush under him as he flails to fling the centipede off and into a far corner of the room, swings out his arm only to backhand Yusuke in the jaw--

 

And they both tumble off the bed into a tangled heap on the floor, covered in black charcoal and defeated by a centipede that has since crawled away into a crack in the wall. The two of them just lay there, panting, for a long, slow moment.

 

Yusuke isn’t looking too elegant anymore: he’s flushed, his face is covered in black smudges, wearing an expression of blank bewilderment. He lets his head flop over to face Akira (about to chastise him for interrupting, perhaps, or bemoan the loss of his charcoal, or tut at him for treating a ‘wonderfully strange and symmetrical creature with such tactlessness’) and, instead of any of the ideas Akira has pre-considered, starts to laugh. He laughs and laughs and it’s a deep belly-laugh too, bubbly and infectious, sincere and delighted and a little reckless. The grin it brings to Yusuke’s face is so rare and precious that Akira starts to laugh along even when the breath catches in his throat. 

 

And when Akira leans over to kiss him, he finds out that Yusuke doesn’t do  _ that _ in halves, either.


End file.
